From 'La stampa'Are you going to the mountains without taking any precautions or making any 'what if'' contingency plans? Well as from now you will be asked to pay the rescue costs if you get stuck or worse! Only 3 Italian regions: Aosta Valley, Trentino Alto Adige and Veneto have made the plans to stem the number of 'futile calls' that they receive in growing numbers every year, wasting precious time that could be used to save other people in genuine emergency situations. If your injuries are within the 'medical parameters' as the result of an accident they will take you down without you paying a penny.

Any instructor should inform and educate their pupils about these rules, although they may shy away from them slightly in some cases in order to concentrate on your improvement in skill instead, as this is what they tend to be judged on. The code encompasses the following:

The most important signs are those which dictate you should go no further for safety reasons. These will be self explanatory and multilingual in all maintained slopes. The colour code which indicates the difficulty of the run varies depending on the region in which you are skiing. The tables below show the codes for the main international ski destinations:

Thursday 22nd April 2010 is a historic day for the development of the international ski mountaineering. In the Swiss city Verbier, the day before the famous Patrouille desGlaciers, the last race of the World Cup circuit, a new formula for the 2011 season of skimountaineering has been presented.